Once a year the copper leaves his beat.                                                                                                  

In the sea he pops his great big feet.                                                                                               

Watch him walking on the golden sand,                                                                                                  

With a bathing beauty holding his big hand.                                                                                        

On the pier before the crowds arrive,                                                                                                   

He blows up his water wings and takes a dive.                                                                                    

All the crabs and shrimps and winkles shout with all their might                                              

 "Steady, boys; here comes a copper!" Good night!

• ....there's another more risqué verse about the copper back at work liaising with a nursemaid in a secluded corner of a park of an evening...Mum used to sing snatches of this or a variant (the crustacea 'run away in fright'?) which I guess she learned from her mother, who learned it in her teens as an urban sophisticate in Brisbane in the carefree 1920s, before marrying a farmer and dying in her forties up in the hills amidst the rain forest...

• Meanwhile, a bit more recently, last week in fact, here in Darwin, a local man murdered four people with a pump-action sawn-off. He had come to the attention of the coppers twice already during that day, and he was currently on parole, complete with tracker-anklet, yet he kind of wandered around, and drove here and there shooting people, and eventually gave himself up, which he kind of had to do anyway because one of his victims had managed to stab him...